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It’s time for us all to start making plans and building excitement for World Read Aloud Day 2019 with Litworld. This year, World Read Aloud Day takes place on February 1, 2019, but many of us will celebrate the entire week of January 28-February 1, 2019.

World Read Aloud Day “calls global attention to the importance of reading aloud and sharing stories.” When we connect our students through Skype, Google Hangouts, or other web tools, they experience the power of the read aloud and realize that they are connected with a bigger world that is both the same and different from them. By connecting our voices through reading aloud, we are reading on behalf of the 758 million people who cannot read.

This year, we’ve tried to organize the document by time zones to make it easier to find connections that work for you. If you don’t see your time zone listed, please add it as a heading.

When you share your schedule, be sure to include:

Your name

Your contact info such as social media, Skype, and/or email

Your role

Your school and grade levels

Your location

List your time zone when posting your available dates and times

After you post your own schedule, take a look at the other schedules and sign up on someone’s schedule to connect your students. We’ve found that it doesn’t matter if same grade levels connect with one another. Often times, an older grade can read aloud to a younger grade or younger grades can find parts of a books that they can read aloud to an older grade. There’s not just one way to connect. Part of the fun is meeting new friends, planning your read alouds, and seeing what magical things happen during your connection that you weren’t even expecting.

We have many ideas from previous years on our blogs. You can read more about previous World Read Aloud Day connections on Expect the Miraculous and The Library Voice. Litworld also has several resources for you to use in your planning and connections including:

We are in the midst of one of my favorite months to celebrate in the library, Picture Book Month. In 2013, I started brainstorming with several dynamic librarians across the country a way for us to celebrate the close of the month. Jenny Lussier, Cathy Potter, Shawna Ford, Kathy Kaldenberg, and I created the very first Picture Book Smackdown which was held via Google Hangout on November 21, 2013. Authors Laurel Snyder and Ame Dyckman joined us as well. For one hour, we all shared as many picture book talks as possible. This was the beginning of an annual event that is now in its 6th iteration.

This year, our event will take place on November 29th from 1:30PM-2:30PM EST. We will feature students from:

Orchard School in South Burlington, VT (facilitated by Donna MacDonald)

Early Childhood Development Center in Corpus Christi, TX (facilitated by Julee Murphy)

This year we are also very excited to announce that we will be joined by author, Saadia Faruqi. She is the author of Meet Yasmin!, Yasmin the Fashionista, Yasmin the Painter, Yasmin the Explorer, and Yasmin the Builder.

I‘ve put together a Smore which will be a place holder for our live broadcast on Youtube Live. Even if you can’t join us, you can watch the archive of our smackdown via the link on the Smore.

What to expect:

A live broadcast via Youtube Live or archived to watch at a later time

Numerous student voices book talking their favorite picture books in 3 states

A short talk from Saadia Faruqi about why picture books matter in the world

A list of the books we reference

What you can do:

Watch live with your class!

Host your own picture book smackdown in your classroom, library, or district

Share your favorite picture books on social media using the hashtags #pbsmkdwn and #picturebookmonth

Send students a shout out on Twitter using #pbsmkdwn

In Loving Memory of Dianne de Las Casas

We will of course continue reading and sharing picture books all year long, but we want to end November with this special event. This year’s Picture Book Smackdown is once again dedicated in loving memory of Dianne de Las Casas, founder of Picture Book Month. We lost Dianne in a tragic fire, but her legacy of advocating for the importance of picture books in our world lives on.

It’s November 1, which means the beginning of picture book month. We’ve been celebrating this special month since it was created back in 2011 by Dianne de Las Casas. Today, we launched our annual picture book challenge. The challenge has been a bit different each year. Some years, students have earned stamps for reading a certain number of picture books. Other years, students have set their own personal goals for what to read whether it was reading a certain number, all the books by a specific author, every book on a certain shelf, etc.

This year, I decided to focus on the genres of our picture book section. I made a sheet that lists out each picture book genre/format in our library with a check box by each one. I also included a line. The goal is for students to read 12 picture books across the month of November, 1 book from each section. They simply write the title of the book on the line when they finish reading. At the bottom of the sheet, I asked students to list their favorite book they read for the challenge and tell why picture books matter in the world.

At the end of picture book month, we hold a picture book smackdown where we do a virtual hangout with authors and schools to book talk favorite picture books. I hope that the challenge will get some students prepped for the smackdown by already having a favorite book and a reason picture books matter.

Today, we launched the challenge on our morning broadcast by going over the instructions and showing the sheet. I’m also highlighting a diverse selection of books in my read alouds and encouraging students to think about windows and mirrors as they read for the challenge.Every student who finishes the challenge will get a certificate and a special bookmark. We will also announce their name on our morning broadcast. Each finisher will also have their name entered into a drawing for an autographed picture book. I try to get an extra autographed picture book each time we have an author visit or I go somewhere to hear an author. This year I’ll give away signed copies of More-igami, King Alice, Love, Last Stop on Market Street, and Hansel and Gretel. I showed each of these books on the morning broadcast too.

Our 5th grade recently spent some time in the library exploring places in texts where the reader must make an inference in order to know the full story. This is a standard that our 5th graders work on in the first quarter.

ELAGSE5RL1: Quotes accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

To prepare for this lesson, I spent some time reading several picture books as well as exploring what other educators have done with inferences. This post by Pernille Ripp was especially helpful. Anytime we work on language arts standards, I want a good portion of our time to be spent actually reading rather than just practicing a specific skill. With picture book month approaching, I thought this experience would be a good time to reiterate with our older readers that picture books are for all readers and to give them time to read at least 2-3 books during our time together.

Here are the books I decided to pull for this experience:

The Skunk by Mac Barnett

We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen

Shhh! We Have a Plan by Chris Haughton

Mr. Peabody’s Apples by Madonna

The Rough Patch by Brian Lies

Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan

Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson

After the Fall by Dan Santat

Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza

Boats for Papa by Jessixa Bagley

Unspoken by Henry Cole

For each book, I made a folder with instructions and a guiding question. Inside the folder, I placed some blank post-it notes.

As students entered the library, we began our time on the carpet. I launched right in to talking about a picture book author, Bethan Woollvin. I let students know about her subversive, fractured fairy tales and also that she leaves some of her story to the reader to figure out. In each class, there was usually a handful of students who mentioned that this was an inference. If they didn’t then, we talked about how we would need to make inferences when we read her stories.

I read aloud Little Red. We paused a few places to talk about inferences we must make as the reader:

When the wolf makes a plan

When the wolf climbs into Grandma’s bed looking completely ridiculous

When Little Red makes a plan

When Little Red is wearing a wolf costume at the end of the book

This whole read aloud experience was setting students up for their own task. With a partner, students chose one of the picture books I had pulled. Their goal was to enjoy the book together. While they were reading, they were invited to think about places in the text and illustrations where the author/illustrator left the story up to the reader to figure out. Any inferences could be written onto a post-it note to add to the folder for future readers to read and consider. As more students read each book, more post-it notes appeared in the folders and readers could compare their own thoughts to those of others.

The teacher and I were able to sit with pairs of students and listen to their reading. Sometimes we read aloud with them as well and became a natural part of the conversation on inferences. What I loved the most was looking around and seeing so many 5th grade readers engaged with a text and having a genuinely good time reading them. The inference part was low key enough that the enjoyment of the book was the more central part of their time.

We closed our time by having any pairs of students who loved a book do a short book talk for others and highlight where that book could be found in the library. My hope was that this would be a spark to our picture book month challenge where students are encouraged to read a picture book from each genre section of the library.

In just 2 weeks, we will welcome author/illustrator Matthew Cordell to our school. Small groups of our Kindergarten students have been coming to the library to work on a special project. This project came about because our Kindergarten classes are unable to attend our regularly scheduled makerspace times. I wanted to offer them some special opportunities throughout the year because of this. Thankfully, I now have a high school intern, Andrea Arumburo, who is collaborating with me in the library most afternoons. Her focus is art, so I knew she would align perfectly with Kindergarten makerspace opportunities.

For this first round of classes, groups of 5 students from each Kindergarten class came to the library to create puppets based on Matthew Cordell’s Wolf in the Snow. We began by refreshing students’ memories on what happened in the story with a quick flip through the book. Then, Andrea talked with the students about creating characters on paper plate circles. She offered that they could replicate the characters in the story, or they could design a character that looked more like themselves. She had several examples to show them.

Next, students moved to tables and sketched out their characters on paper plate circles and colored them. We placed examples on each table as well as a copy of the book. As students finished a puppet, they glued a tongue depressor stick onto the circle to create the puppet. Most students chose to make a 2nd character so that they had one human and one wolf.

Once students finished, we sent them to spots around the library to practice retelling the story. Kindergarten talks a lot about 3 ways to read a book: read the words, read the pictures, retell the story. This was a great opportunity to practice retelling. Some students referred back to the book. Others remembered every detail. Others used their artistic license to completely change the story and make it their own.

After practicing, they found a partner and shared their puppet show story with a partner. For many, this was the stopping point in our time limit of 40 minutes. However, a few students were able to come over to the green screen and practice retelling their story in front of the camera.

In one session, we decided we didn’t have enough time to film anyone so instead, we all sat on the carpet with our puppets and we walked back through the pages of the book together. I told the story and students used their puppets to act out the story. I loved watching them hide puppets behind their backs when that character wasn’t in a scene. This unexpected closing was actually something I wish I had done with the other groups because it made a connection between the puppets and the story. I think it would have helped students in making their own puppet shows.

Our hope is that Andrea and I can continue to offer these opportunities throughout the year. Some will be low-tech, high-tech, or a mix of it all.

School is back in session in Georgia, and I’m once again reorganizing what happens in the first visit to the library. I’ve tried to steer away from a traditional orientation where students hear the do’s and don’ts in the library. It’s not that they aren’t important, but is that really the message I want to send about reading with the first words that come out of my mouth?

The message that I really want students to hear is about the joy of reading. I want them to hear about how readers talk about books to one another. I want them to hear how books can be windows into other worlds and other perspectives. I want them to hear how books can be mirrors that reflect a part of ourselves back to us.

I also wanted to tackle a problem that bothered me last year. I saw so many students continue to come to the library and spend their whole time standing at the computer typing out topics in the library catalog instead of actually looking at books in our various genre sections. I had hoped that genres would eliminate this, but it hasn’t. I decided to start with something that wasn’t intimidating to most readers: the first lines of a book.

So, here’s what a first library visit looked like for 3rd-5th grade this year.

What are you reading?

We started with a question, but instead of asking students to share their own reading, I showed them what I just finished and what I was reading now.

I promised them that all year long I would post what I’m reading on the door of the library so they can always see, even if I’m with a class. I told them that my hope was that anyone in the school could ask anyone else in the school what they are reading and both of them would have an answer. One of the best ways to find a new book is to see what others are reading, so we are giving ourselves permission to freely ask each other throughout the year about books. I also hope that several teachers will begin to post their reading outside their classrooms too. In most classes, a few students said what they were reading now, and I loved how it immediately felt like a connection between us.

A post shared by Andy Plemmons (@andy.plemmons) on May 25, 2018 at 4:43am PDT

Next, I showed students some of my summer reading. I did book talks of Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed, Front Desk by Kelly Yang, and the Track Series by Jason Reynolds. As soon as I finished book talks, I showed students a picture of a window and a mirror and asked them about their purpose. Then, students brainstormed how a book could be like a window and a mirror. It was a conversation we’ve never had in such an public manner, but so many of them added amazing contributions to the conversation. One standout comment was how a window keeps you safe from things going on outside and a book lets you explore dangerous situations without getting hurt. I let students know that I intentionally chose books this summer that would most likely be windows for me. I wanted to read about people whose lives were very different from my own.

This became our invitation to step into the books in the library and begin to look for windows and mirrors for each of us. Ahead of time, I put chairs at each section of our chapter book section: scary, realistic fiction, historical fiction, humor, fantasy, sports, mystery, science fiction, and adventure.

I shared with students how one more great way to discover new books is to visit sections you love and try out the very first lines of several books. Some of my favorite books hooked me with the very first line. I shared Barbara O’Connor’s first line from How to Steal a Dog.

“The day I decided to steal a dog was the same day my best friend, Luanne Godfrey, found out I lived in a car.”

That line has so much story packed into it. Why did she steal a dog? What’s her situation that she lives in a car? What does Luanne think about all this? You can’t help but read on to find out.

I placed students into random chairs in the chapter books and invited them to try as many first lines as possible in about 90 seconds.

Then, they moved to the right to the next chair and had 90 seconds in that section. We continued this process for as many rounds as we could squeeze in.

Students did not take any books with them, but I told them to make mental notes of what books caught their attention. Some students thrived in this experience. Others weren’t happy that they were in a section that they didn’t usually visit. Still others read first lines in one section but not in another. The teacher and I circulated and gently encouraged students to keep giving the books a try. Sometimes that even meant jumping in with a student and reading some first lines for them.

Back on the carpet, I asked if anyone found a book that grabbed their attention, and it was amazing to see how many people raised their hands. We used this brief moment to go over some reminders before exploring the whole library to checkout books.

Enjoy reading as much as you can while you’re here

Choose what you love, but push yourself too

Spend less time at the computers, and more time at the shelves

Respect other learners

Borrow what you need (limits are different for every reader)

Honor the line at check out

What happened next is what encouraged me the most. Students could hardly contain themselves as they rushed to the shelves to find their first check outs of the year. Almost none of the students went to the computers and instead went straight to shelves and started opening up books. As students have returned for their 2nd rounds of check outs, they have continued to visit the shelves more than the computers. I can’t wait to see how our momentum builds during the year, and I want to immediately start asking “What are you reading?”

For the younger grades I did something very similar, but I book talked several picture books including Drawn Together by Minh Li, The Very Last Castle by Travis Jonker, and Hansel & Gretel by Bethan Woolvin. After talking about windows and mirrors, we read aloud All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold. I wanted students to see and hear the message that all are welcome at our school and in our library. We used the book to talk about the windows and mirrors we saw within the book and our own school.

This group did the book sampling at the picture book section. Some classes rotated chairs and other classes just stayed in one seat to practice using shelf markers and sampling books.

Overall, this new orientation experience did everything I hoped it would do, and only time will tell if it got us kicked off in the right way. The one big pitfall of this was that the shelves started to look like a tornado had gone through. Books were pushed back behind other books. Books were on the floor. Books were turned upside down and backwards. I had to pause and take some deep breaths every once in awhile, but when you look at the grand scheme of things, the messy shelves are evidence of excited readers, so it’s hard to complain too much about the mess.

Onward we go to search for the windows and mirrors in our library collection. Onward we go to becoming a school community that shares our reading lives with one another.

Each year, we celebrate poetry month by hosting Poem In Your Pocket days in the library. Across 2 days, every class comes to the library to read aloud original and favorite poems into an open microphone. We broadcast these readings over Youtube Live so that families, community, and beyond can enjoy our poetry too.

Our readings will take place from 8:00AM-2:30PM EST on April 12 and 13, 2018.

All the links to the Youtube events can be found at our 2018 Poem In Your Pocket Smore. https://www.smore.com/p9qbk

You can also view the schedule here:

Thursday April 12

8:00

2nd – VanderWall

8:30

2nd – Woodring

9:00

2nd- B. Douglas

9:30

3rd-Morman

10:00

1st-Cunningham

10:30

1st Skinner

11:00

PreK-Trina

11:20

PreK-Heather

12:00

Lunch

12:30

1st Stuckey

1:00

K-Clarke

1:30

4th Coleman

2:00

4th Weaver

Friday April 13

8:00

2nd – Brink

8:30

K-Hocking

9:00

2nd-Boyle

9:30

3rd-Thompson

10:00

5th grade class 1 Freeman

10:30

1st Wyatt

11:00

5th grade class 2 Freeman

11:30

3rd-Haley

12:00

3rd-Arnold

12:30

K- Sandifer

1:00

5th grade class 3 Freeman

1:30

K- Lauren

2:00

4th Monroe

If you choose to watch our videos live or watch the archives, we encourage you to tweet comments to our students using the hashtag #barrowpoems We’ll share your comments with students as they come in. Happy Poetry Month!